Friday, February 28, 2014

winter's overstay... (am.28.feb.14)>

There is a broken overcast across the area just before sunrise this morning, and the temperature is very near the overnight low of 41.2F (5.1C).  If there were any showers during the night, I slept through them, but it seems I have about 0.02" (less than 1mm) extra in the rain gauge this morning -- so maybe something did move through at some point.  The humidity reading is currently 56%.

Our wet and cold February has reached its final day, and will be bowing out in similar fashion.  It is almost ridiculously cold for this time of year, with temperatures since yesterday afternoon running about 10-12F below normal for the end of Feb.  Even if we get some sunshine on occasion during the coming few days, our air mass is of central Asian origin and still has the character of winter.

A very slow-moving upper-level disturbance remains centered over central Pakistan, and will shift only to Punjab/Himachal by tomorrow (Sat) evening.  There is a healthy amount of moisture lying across northern India now, with colder air continuing to filter in from the north and northwest.  All of these ingredients will keep us dealing with an unstable weather situation that could yield periods of rain showers and thunder all the way into Sunday, which is the first day of Tibetan Losar.  As we saw yesterday, temperatures in the higher levels of the atmosphere are cold enough to produce frozen forms of precipitation, so if we get more convective/thundery development, we could see another round of snow/sleet/hail.  Just be prepared for sudden turns and changes all the way through the coming weekend.

I am very sorry to say that there seems to be yet another disturbance which is expected to sweep into our area by late Monday and Tuesday, increasing the risk of wet weather into the middle of next week.  Temperatures will not be making any kind of a springtime leap, either...

CURRENT FORECAST details can be found on the tab at the top of the page.